Navan · 2 hours ago
Staff Software Engineer - AI Developer Experience (AI-EX)
Palo Alto, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$130K/yr - $288K/yrNavan is seeking a Staff Lead for AI Developer Experience (AI-Ex) to own the technical strategy and vision for their internal developer platform. The role involves architecting a 'Demo to Prod' toolchain and leading the creation of systems that empower engineers to efficiently transition from prototypes to production-ready code.
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Responsibilities
Own the multi-year technical roadmap for the AI-Ex toolchain. Define the 'What' and 'How' of our AI-native developer environment, from IDE integrations to automated CI/CD pipelines
Build the 'Demo to Prod' pipeline. Lead the effort to bridge the gap between experimental snippets and hardened features. You will establish the patterns, reusable libraries, and systemic guardrails that ensure AI-assisted code meets our highest production standards
Lead the strategic 'stretch goal' of democratizing the codebase. Architect the automated reviews, visual regression tests, and intent-validation systems that allow non-engineers to contribute high-quality code
Establish the organizational standards for AI-generated code. You will lead systemic experimentation—benchmarking models and tools against clear engineering metrics to ensure our capabilities compound over time
Work cross-functionally with AI Ops, Security, and Release Engineering. Ensure the AI-Ex vision is integrated into the company's core infrastructure. You will act as a primary consultant for leadership on the 'sea changes' in AI developer capabilities
Qualification
Required
Developer platform leadership experience. You have a proven track record as a Staff or Principal Engineer building the 'connective tissue' of large-scale development environments—internal tools, IDE extensions, or CI/CD platforms that scale engineering impact
AI systems expertise. You have a deep understanding of how emerging reasoning-dense models, agent skills, and agentic IDEs are reshaping how code is authored, tested, and reviewed. You have hands-on experience with LLM APIs, prompt engineering, agentic workflows, agent SDKs, and runtime/memory management for agentic systems. You don't just follow trends; you design workflows that put these capabilities to work in real engineering environments
Systems thinking mindset. You treat LLMs as probabilistic components within a deterministic system. You are obsessed with observability, benchmarking, and building reproducible workflows that move beyond 'prompt engineering' into 'systems engineering.'
Proven ability to lead organizational change. You are a leader who thrives on changing technical cultures. You understand the 'political' and technical risks of moving from specifications to code contributions and have the experience to navigate those challenges through superior architecture
Developer platform engineering expertise. You have experience across the stack—modern IDE frameworks, testing infrastructure, CI/CD systems (GitHub workflows, automation, CI/CD pipelines), automated review mechanisms, infrastructure and observability tooling, and containerization. Strong scripting and automation skills (Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Java, or similar), with hands-on experience building developer tools for both backend and frontend environments
Company
Navan
Navan provides travel, expense, and corporate card management to automate manual processes and drive spend visibility.
Founded in 2015
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Navan has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (45)
2024 (22)
2023 (38)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$2.25BKey Investors
Goldman Sachs Bank USACoatueGreenoaks
2025-10-30IPO
2025-04-07Convertible Note
2022-12-08Debt Financing· $400M
Leadership Team
Ariel Cohen
CEO and Co-Founder
Carlos Avelar
Account Executive
Recent News
2026-01-23
Company data provided by crunchbase